North Bachelor Officer's Quarters
Fifth Floor
2/19th SWG Barracks
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
28 October, 1987
0230

Stillwater was walking in front of me, slow footsteps that looked like they should thud against the frozen tile but instead were soundless. He'd stopped dripping blood from his hands onto the tile, which was good. We were about ten feet from the set of middle dividing doors, having walked almost a full city block, when he suddenly stopped. He pressed himself against the wall and looked at me, his face gastly in the glow from the chemlight I had stuck between my boobs. Those assholes had torn open my BDU top, ripping the top two buttons free, when they'd groped my tits before the three of them had taken turns shoving dicks in my mouth. The top of my BDU blouse was open, the neck of my brown T-shirt torn from those three idiots shoving their hands into it to grope my tittty-meat, meaning my cleavage was not only on display, but getting colder by the second. The skin, normally brown from sunning myself at Atlas or wherever I got the chance, was white, waxy looking, the freckles standing out like spots of dried blood. The green chemlight made my breasts and Stillwater's face look like that of a corpse.

I threw myself against the wall, not even asking, still looking at him. The pupil on his left eye was still dilated and fixed to the point his iris looked like it had no color, his left pupil had shrunk, responding to the dim glow of the green chemlight.

I opened my mouth to ask him what it was, when I heard it myself.

A child. A girl child. Singing in Yiddish. Tap shoes clacking on the floor in rhythm to her song.

...oh Lord Jesus, protect me and guard me...

Stillwater pointed at his own eyes, then at me, then closed his one eye.

Whatever that was in his skull stared at me through the open ruined eye. Cold, calculating, inhuman, but not malevolent.

...not of the mountain...

Something inside him maybe?

Just before I closed my eyes I saw her.

She moved through the door as if it wasn't there. Her hair in pigtails, ribbons dazzled with rhinestones at the ends, a small yellowish dress with embriodered flowers. Tapshoes with rhinestone clad buckles. A yellowish-white Star of David on her left breast attached with black thread that also spelled out "JUDEN' on her dress.

Her eyes were black pits where two small marbles of pitch black glittered. Her mouth was smeared with crimson and when she sang I could see needle-like teeth in her mouth and a tongue like a rasp. Her fingertip were without fingernails, the ends replaced with lamprey mouths that pulsed with a strange life all their own, the flesh inside the mouth vile and purple, the teeth a glossy black.

She held a jump rope by the brightly painted handles in one hand, the rope snaking behind her, the middle of the rope black with blood that left a red smear in the frost that bloomed beneath her tap dancing shoes.

I shut my eyes before she knew I had seen her. I hoped.

...Gracious Heavenly Father, in Jesus Christ's name, I approach Your throne of grace and ask for your help in my time of need...

I prayed silently for the little girl to pass me by.

The tap shoes went by, the Yiddish song drifting by as if it was being sung from somewhere far away, much further than the taps from her shoes.

Ice cold washed over me, making the tears that had squeezed from my eyes freeze in my lashes, making the moisture I'd left on my lips when I had licked them nervously froze instantly, cracking the delicate skin. The lobes of my ears flared with pain and vanished. The sensitive mucus membranes in my nose froze painfully. My crotch, my poor muffin, flared with pain as all the warmth vanished and the delicate tissues were seared by cold. My nipples ached with one  throb and were replaced by two points of ice that drove cold deep into my breasts, reaching for my heart.

I held my breath, not exhaling like I so desperately wanted to, knowing, somehow, that to inhale would bring in air so cold my lungs would crystallize and leave me choking to death.

My core temperature dropped, my muscles went leaden as the cold destroyed that ATP, my blood started moving sluggishly, slowing down despite my heartbeat hammering in fear. Pain flared all over my body as the thickened blood tried to push through veins.

Then she was passed.

Heat bloomed in my belly and chest as my body reacted to the cold by burning sugars and calories, heating the blood and pushing it into my veins in hopes of getting my muscles to work and warm up the cold blood in my extremities.

"Crawm-wahl," The voice was grating, growling, barely human.

I opened my eyes, shivering, and looked up into Stillwater's. That inhuman intelligence and the man I had known both stared back at me through his two green eyes.

"Whee go," he growled, then coughed. More red blood, this time misting my face.

He turned and I followed him when he pushed through the door. The floor had a pattern of thick frost on it that I knew had spread from her dancing skipping footsteps. A snaking red path of red tinged frost was in the middle of the path. The doors screamed, the hinges and the hydraulic cylinders at the top that were supposed to aid in their opening and automatically close them both frozen.

It was so cold that hydraulic fluid was frozen. Either from the ambient temperature, which was leeching away my body heat as fast as my body could burn the sugars and calories to make it, or from her passage, which had left me numb and shaking, my hands and feet filled with fiery pain.

Stillwater pulled open the Middle Stairwell door, the ice shattering, exploding out from the doorframe. One chip cut my cheek, but there was no warmth of spilled blood, just a stinging feeling from the cut and the blood freezing on my skin.

It was too cold to even bleed.

I followed him in, imitating him as he moved against the wall side of the stairs. That kept the stairs from vibrating or making noise at our passage as we kept going down.

Below us a woman screamed then sobbed in agony as we passed the landing between the fifth and fourth floors. As we passed the fourth floor there was a shout in German that I recognized as a call to attention and the crash of boots on the tile. On the landing between the fourth and fifth floor the window shattered inward. The wind cut at me, slicing through my winter BDU's, razoring at my flesh. Snow blew in, light sharp snowseeds mixed with fat freezing flakes, and I ducked my head.

At the third floor a woman that I didn't recognize, her face made ugly by pain, terror, and nature, slammed against the small glass window, smearing it with blood that immediately froze. She was screaming, her nose flattening between her face and the wire reinforced glass, her lips splitting with the force holding her against the glass.

She was screaming soundlessly.

We kept moving.

At the landing between the second and third floor lay a man in BDU's, his chest hacked open, ribs shattered, internal organs exposed and covered in frost. There was no pool of blood around him, just the body.

A woman screamed in agony above us and a cold wind blew down the stairwell, slicing at the back of my neck. I reached up and undid my hair as we reached the second floor landing, hoping my thick hair would protect that skin. I had a horrible thought of the cold slicing through the back of my neck and into the base of my skull.

The dark seemed get closer around us as I rounded the landing, passing the heavy steel door, and saw the blood sprayed all over the wall beside the door. It had frozen rather than run down the tile, no white on the frozen liquid, just frozen blood thickly sprayed on the wall.

A piece of 7.62mm brass bounced off the toe of my boot and chimed as it danced down the stairs, passing Stillwater, hitting the far wall of the landing, skittering across the landing, and falling into the gap between the stairs, falling into the darkness.

I had the feeling of something old, dark, and ugly slithering in the dark above me. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as it evoked something primal, something in my brainstem, as I heard the obscene slithering sound.

We rounded the stairwell between the first and second floor. Only three more sets to go.

I was exhausted. My body was having problems producing ATP to move my limbs.

...how in the fuck did they survive four winters in these conditions...

First floor landing. There were bullet craters in the wall, dimples in the door. Blood spatter around the side of the door that would open, the handle twisted and damaged, the wire reinforced narrow window cratered by bullets.

"YOU FUCKS TRIED TO KILL MY BABY!" rang out above and around me. The woman's voice was shrill, furious, full of self-righteous rage. It hammered at my eardrums, and I felt my left one burst and a trickle of blood leak into my ear where it froze.

The stairs below were cratered by a grenade, two of the stone steps shattered showing only  the frame that held them. Another piece of 7.62mm chimed, this time off of Stillwater's boot, and vanished into the darkness when it dropped into the steps that were missing now, but not when I had come up the stairs only a little while ago.

We stepped over the missing steps, and rounded the corner to the last set of stairs. Beneath us would be the War Fighter Tunnels, in front of us the way Stillwater had come to get me.

Stillwater reached the bottom of the stairs, glanced behind him and shuddered, his whole body shaking, then he slowly looked forward at the heavy door.

Beyond that door was a short, by the standards of the massive barracks, hallway that had a door to the outside at the far end. That would be covered by snow, unusable. On the right would be the QASI Office, then Chief Henley's Office and the others of NBC Warfare Control, then mailboxes, then the double doors to the supply room storage and what some referred to as "Long Term Storage", usually used for storing confiscated stuff or the property of someone who had died or who had left the unit.

Usually dead.

On the left would be the War Stocks, then more offices, then the secondary communications room that would be hooked into the sat-com systems outside.

That would be buried under snow and useless.

Providing that the scrubs hadn't set any guards, we could probably make it.

Something moved in the darkness above us.

Stillwater pulled open the door and I ghosted through it silently, the bayonet in my fist and tensed to cut the life out of anyone on the other side of the door.

The hallway was empty. Just frozen blood from where I'd gotten my hands loose and stabbed the fucker who'd stuck his dick in my ass dry right here at the bottom of the stairs when I refused to open the War Fighter Tunnels. Even if I could have, I wouldn't have. So he'd try to fuck the code out of me, thinking something as simple as what him and his friends did to me at the bottom of the Middle Stairwell would terrify me, unaware I'd used the distraction of the guy in front of me trying to choke me with his cock to slide the my boot knife out of his boot. Five minutes later I was telling him how deep and warm it was inside of him while I twisted my boot knife in his guts. Whispered in his ear how good he felt as I twisted the knife, pushing him against the wall and kissing him, pushing my tongue into his mouth as he coughed blood. I'd pulled the knife out to stab again when his friends finally started moving.

They'd knocked me out for that, kicked the shit out of my ribs, but it had been worth it.

He'd only just finished dying when Stillwater had yanked me into the hallway. I'd torn apart his intestines, ripped up his diaphram, carved a chunk out of his stomach, and nicked a lung when I'd thrust the knife home and twisted it savagely.

When I woke up he had been busy dying, drowning in his own blood, bleeding out, his abdominal cavity full of stomach acid and bile. I'd relished every scream he made in silent cold satisfaction.

They'd given me a bad day.

I was going to repay it.

The Atlas way.

In blood.

The squeal of the door being opened ripped me out of my cold thoughts.

Beyond us the War Stocks Room lay in silence, cold, and dark.

Stillwater thudded into the room, those size-11W boots of his carrying him in long strides into the darkness.

I tossed away the spent chemlight, cracked another, stuck it between those bags of ice I used to call breasts, and followed him into the darkness.

Behind us the door boomed shut.

Something skittered in the dark.